7th in National League could go up next year

[ClaretTony]

The National League (all three divisions) have changed the play off format for next year with six clubs taking part rather than four.

The league winners will win promotion but the play offs will be

1st round
4th v 7th
5th v 6th

semi-finals
2nd v 1st round winners
3rd v 1st round winners

If they'd done that this year then Barrow would have been in the play offs alongside Tranmere yet they finished 20 points apart in the league.

[jdrobbo]

Bloody stupid.

Ridiculous.

Bankers!


Hey, why don't the bottom right in each league have a relegation play-off at the same time.


Nuts!!

[KRBFC]

Should be 1st place go up automatically, 2nd play a playoff against 3rd bottom of L2 and 3rd-7th in the playoffs. I know 2 only get relegated from l2 but only the Champions get automatic seems strange.

[ClaretTony]

The Football League tried to implement this but the Premier League blocked it. It could have meant 8th going up with the top two.

[RammyClaret61]

Not quite as silly as deciding your champions via a knockout at the end of the season. The A-League "top" six in a league of ten play off for the championship. Western Sydney Wanderers who finished sixth, 30 pts behind Sydney FC. Only had to win the last 3 games, the finals. To be declared champions. It didn't happen, but Hand on heart, could the Australian FA say the best team over the year are champions if it had? Also I believe that the Asian Champions League only admit teams on league position and ignore the Grand Final.

[minnieclaret]

madness. Even in the EFL I'd like to see a points cut off. So if 6th were more than 10 points(for example) behind 3rd, 3rd would go through automatic and the same for 4th and 5th.
I understand the argument that they all know the rules at the start of the season, I just don't agree with it. A 6 point differential could be down to poor decisions but 10 points indicates a better team.
As usual cash is king. A third placed team 10 points better off than fourth would be promoted automatically. 5 money generating fixtures would be lost and that would never do!

[bfcmik]

I thought they had already played at 42 game play-off?

[Caernarfon_Claret]

All part of the idea you need to stop dead rubbers at the end of the season by keeping teams interested in reaching playoffs right to the end. Dumbing down football.

[claretdom]

Blackburn are trying to push through a new rule that the top 24 in league 1 qualify for the play offs

[Falcon]

I think the best bet would be to give them 3 promotion spots and have the traditional 3 v 6, 4 v 5 play off system.

There's tons of National League sides that could more than hold their own in League 2

[TheFamilyCat]

Not quite as silly as deciding your champions via a knockout at the end of the season. The A-League "top" six in a league of ten play off for the championship. Western Sydney Wanderers who finished sixth, 30 pts behind Sydney FC. Only had to win the last 3 games, the finals. To be declared champions. It didn't happen, but Hand on heart, could the Australian FA say the best team over the year are champions if it had? Also I believe that the Asian Champions League only admit teams on league position and ignore the Grand Final.

No surprise that the Aussie league has the same system that rugby leagues adopt.

[timshorts]

The Pro-12 has annoyingly adopted the same system.

My team (and I say "my team" by default, as my real team went under a decade ago) finished third so go into some play off away in Ireland somewhere. I'm sort of torn in that I'd like them to win it, but far from being champions of 4 countries, I'd still regard Munster as the Champions, and that we'd just win some sort of inter-toto cup.

I used to enjoy watching Rugby League, began to lose interest when they started giving themselves stupid names, and then lost interest altogether when they introduced a concept that the winners of the league weren't the winners.

[Sausage]

Given the chief exec of the National League is a Blackburn fan, I suspect he's working out Rovers' best chance of getting promoted from the National League in season 2019/20.